Teaching Practices That Will Be Sustainable All the Way Till June

One summer I saw an idea online for a cute “Problem of the Week” bulletin board that I thought I could use in my middle school classroom. I would post a problem, students would submit their answers, and I would post the names of the students who got the correct answers the next week.

On the first day of school, the bulletin board was adorable and ready for solving. The second week, I forgot to check all the submissions and provide feedback to those who were incorrect. By the end of the first month, I ran out of time and didn’t update the board or the previous week’s correct students.

Eventually, the bulletin board became “Problem of the Month,” then “Problem of March through June.” With teaching multiple sections of middle school math plus other duties, meetings, lesson planning, and grading, updating the interactive bulletin board slid further and further down my list of priorities. It just wasn’t sustainable for me.

That was not the only time in my 25 years of teaching that a grandiose yet unsustainable idea looked appealing while I was planning for the next school year. Once I had a great idea for a new hall pass system… but it was too complicated and I dropped it by mid-September. Another year, I wanted my classroom to have the calm lighting ambiance of the Boston Public Library reading room, and I considered buying a rechargeable desk lamp for each student’s workspace. Luckily, I scrapped that before school even started—did I really have the time and energy to charge those lamps every day? (Not to mention the cost of buying them in the first place.)

Let’s Be Real

Teachers are typically creative thinkers—we have grand ideas, sometimes with many moving parts (occasionally too many moving parts, in my case). However, it’s important to discern which practices will realistically be sustained for the next 10 months without adding untenable work and complications to an already busy job.

As a teacher of middle and high school, I do not have the same students in the classroom all day, and I often don’t even have the same classroom all day. So now I evaluate any practices I plan to implement at the beginning of the year using the following criteria to ensure that they’ll be sustainable till June.

Easy for students to remember. They have many teachers throughout the day, and we cannot expect them to recall complicated procedures for each of their classes. If you start using a procedure in September, keep it consistent all year—predictability is important for adolescent learners and helps build community and trust. For example, if you want students to pick up any makeup work they need, set aside one spot and don’t change it—it will be easier for students to handle that task without having to ask.

Low effort for me. Changing a curated bulletin board every week or setting up a complicated “classroom bucks” reward system will add unnecessary labor and energy. Dedicate your time to lesson planning, giving feedback, and connecting with students, not die-cutting 100 star shapes each week. Instead of an ever-changing interactive problem board, create an evergreen bulletin board with examples of stellar student work.

Free (or very inexpensive): Avoid making financial commitments such as a group incentive of bringing doughnuts as a reward, maintaining a fancy caddy of supplies for each table, or stocking a treasure box. Small costs add up over 10 months. A coffee can full of golf pencils will meet the needs of students who ask for a pencil, and you can get a box of 144 for $10 or so.

Practices That Work Well Over the Long Haul

So what kinds of classroom practices stand the test of time?

A no-prep warm-up: My colleague Arthene Hammerman, a middle school English and history teacher, begins her classes with quiet reading time. She noticed how her students would come into the classroom harried and busy, and one day she decided that the first three to five minutes of class would be quiet reading time to steady the energy of the students as a warm-up for class. This practice is sustainable all year, every year, because it requires no planning or prep and no special materials. Arthene told me, “By the end of the year, students were asking for more time and groaning when the timer went off.”

Keeping homework organized: Because I teach multiple sections in various classrooms throughout the day, I need an organized, portable method for students to hand in their papers. At the beginning of the year, I assign each student a number based on the alphabetical order of their last name. I have a desk organizer with tabs numbered 1 to 30 (any expandable or accordion-style file folder should work), and students just drop their homework into their slot. It’s easy for me to glance through the tabs to see whose work is missing. Once I’ve marked the papers, I set the organizer out and students pick up their work. Having an organizer for each section I teach helps me keep papers together and organized, and students never wonder where to hand in or pick up their work.

Class jobs: You can reduce your workload by assigning responsibility for some tasks to students. Although class jobs are more common in elementary school, secondary students are capable of taking on responsibilities, and jobs can help create a strong class culture. Writer and podcaster Angela Watson streamlines her classroom procedures by assigning jobs such as clean-up crew and materials manager. If you find yourself tidying up the room after each class, consider assigning the task to students, rotating between students each month. Classroom jobs are more sustainable if students keep their jobs for an extended time without frequent turnover—they get to really know how to do the job.

Bathroom breaks: It’s a good idea to establish early in the year how to ask to use the restroom or visit the nurse without interrupting the flow of class. My general policy: Don’t ask to leave the room if someone—teacher or student—is addressing the entire class. (I make exceptions for emergencies, of course.)

Absences: It can be disruptive to the start of class if a student who was absent approaches you with “I was out, did I miss anything?” I establish at the beginning of the year that all makeup work will be posted on our learning management system (LMS). Students get into the routine of checking the LMS before returning from their absence. Naturally they forget from time to time, but all I need to say to get the student back on track is, “Glad you’re back—please be sure to check the LMS. Stop by my office or email me later if you have any questions.” Keep this procedure consistent, and students will eventually catch on to what to do if they miss class.

When students finish their work early: As with absences, I have a canned response for the inevitable “What do I do when I’m done?” I keep a collection of small puzzles, math games, and logic activities in a back corner of the classroom. Students know they can quietly choose an enrichment activity from the corner without having to ask. If a student needs redirection after they finish a task, I tell them to write thank-you cards to their five favorite teachers—I don’t get many “What do I do?” questions after that. 

The key to ensuring that any of these practices will be sustainable is intentional practice. With all of the curricular demands in the school year, you may think you don’t have time to practice simple classroom procedures in the early days of the year. But that time spent practicing saves time all through the rest of the year because students won’t interrupt learning to ask, “Where do I sit?” “Where do I turn in my paper?” “What do I do when I finish my work?”

As you plan out the classroom procedures you’d like to implement in your classroom this year, try to predict what they will look like in June. Will they still be going strong, or will they be gone by the wayside? Is a procedure simple and easy enough to bring a benefit to the flow of the classroom for months to come? Just remember my Problem of the Week bulletin board as a cautionary tale.

I’ve decided that students can just as easily solve challenges on plain printer paper—not very aesthetic, but it has staying power.